“It is good of you to give me your permission to leave,” Alida said with as much bitterness as she dared.
Gilbert Rasher removed his face from the bosom of the maid long enough to yell to John, “You should put your wife next to the girl I married. Mayhaps she can teach that woman of yours something.”
Alida did not know that she could despise the filthy creature more than she already did. Her husband and this man were alike: to them women were only bodies, put on earth to give them children. And if those children killed the mother in the birthing, what did it matter? There were more women about. To them women had no souls, no thoughts, no wants; they had only bodies.
With the next pain, Alida’s maid Penella came to her, putting her arm under her elbow, and helped her mistress upstairs to her chamber where all was ready for the birth. As they neared the door, Alida halted. “Take me to Rasher’s wife. I will give birth with her.” And mayhap some of what Rasher has will come into my unborn child, she thought.
Penella, who loved her mistress well, looked at her in concern.
“Yes, yes, what is it?” she snapped. “I do not have long.”
“The girl is dying,” Penella whispered. “The priest has already come to her. She will not live more than a few hours. It would not be good for you or your unborn babe to be so near death. That is why I did not tell you of her presence.”
“But what of her child?” Alida gasped as another pain overtook her. “What of it?”
“It has not come. The midwife thinks it will die with her. It is too big for her.” Penella took a breath. “Oh, milady,” she whispered, near to tears. “You should see her. She is a foreign thing, so tiny, not a word can be got out of her. And she is dying from this babe inside her. She has been in labor for two days now.”
Alida’s mind was working. If the woman was dying from having a boy and the boy was about to die, perhaps at the moment of death the boy’s spirit would enter her child and change it into a male. Someone had told her once that the sex of a child was not determined until the actual moment of birth. Before that the child was neither male nor female. Perhaps this was true.
“Take me to her!” Alida demanded, leaving no room for the maid to disagree.
Alida was led to a small, dirty room where a flea-infested straw-filled mattress was tossed onto the floor. On it lay a girl, her face streaked with dirt and tears. She had bitten her lip through and there was smeared blood on her chin. Black hair straggled about her face in limp, dirty strands, entangling under her arms, and around her neck as though it meant to strangle her.
Under the dirt, Alida could see that the girl had once been pretty. Her olive skin showed that she was from a country that had been kissed by the sun. Looking at her, imagining what she must have been once, a person could see sunlight and flowers, could hear birds and the tinkle of her laughter. She was young, no more than sixteen, if that, and under the pallor of death was the bloom of youth in her pretty face and skin.
But now Alida could see that the girl was very near death. It was as though this girl had given up the w
ill to live and now all that was left was the slight movement of her chest above the great lump that was her dying child.
“Help me,” Alida said, motioning for her maids to help her lie beside the dying girl.
Penella, ever protective, protested that she, the lady of the house, could not lie on such filth, but Alida gave her a fierce look, forcing her obedience. The bed was narrow and with the bulk of the two women, the contact between them was intimate.
There had been a time in Alida’s life when she would have felt sympathy for this poor, dying girl lying so close beside her. But that time was long gone. Now all she could think of was giving her husband a strong son.
Berta, the midwife, came trundling up the stairs. She was a fat, lazy creature who was needed so often by Lady Alida that she had permanent residence, living somewhere in the top of the old stone castle. Yesterday she had pronounced that the foreign girl was dying and nothing could be done to save her or the baby. Berta was not about to exert any effort on the wife of a man like Rasher, who she knew would never pay her. Never mind that she worked only a few hours every nine months, she thought she was nearly a lady herself since she delivered her ladyship’s babies.
When Alida raised her legs to the very familiar position of birth, the old woman’s hands were so slick with pig grease from the wedding feast, she did not need a lubricant to check the progress of the coming babe.
“It will be here soon,” Berta said with authority, then glanced at the closed eyes and the deathly pallor of the girl close beside Alida. “That one’s done for. I told you so yesterday,” she said as though the girl’s persistence at holding on to life was an affront to Berta herself. She was thinking only of the dinner she’d had to leave behind to attend to her ladyship and she wanted to make sure that everyone knew it was not her duty to look after dirty, dark-skinned foreigners as well.
As Alida’s contractions came with closer frequency, she twined her arm about the girl’s, feeling her cold skin next to her own. Her fingers slipped about the girl’s nearly lifeless ones. She did this not for comfort or even for relief of pain, for the truth was, Alida often felt that she could have continued her embroidery during birth.
The reason she held the girl’s hand was to encourage the spirit of that child to enter her child. Alida began to pray, turning her head toward the girl so she was close to her ear. “God, grant that this child may come unto me,” she whispered, for what felt like hours.
The girl had shown little sign of life for quite a while, but just lay there unmoving, her huge belly swollen. It was as though the child inside her had given up hope of trying to get out and had resigned itself to its approaching death.
When the girl seemed to be drawing her last breath, Alida turned the limp head toward her so they were nose to nose. With all the life Alida had in her, she prayed and begged God to give her child the spirit of this woman’s son.
When she felt Alida’s breath on her face, the girl’s eyelids flickered and after several tries, she managed to open them slightly. When she looked at Alida, with her eyes closed in fervent prayer, the girl seemed to rally some.
To Alida’s astonishment, for she thought the girl past any sensibility, the girl’s fingers tightened around her own. The girl’s grasp was as weak as a kitten’s, but Alida could feel life lingering in the frail body.
When the girl spoke it was so quietly that only Alida could hear her. The rest of the women in the room were bustling about, trying to look busy, so no one else noticed the faint whispers of a dying girl.
“My child shall be your child;
Your child shall be mine.